Astac

Hey,
 
Please see below for a list of product verticals that we don't work with. Please note this list is subject to change.
 
Drugs / Alcohol
We do not believe this is responsible for us to promote at this time.
 
Crypto / NFT’s / ICO’s
Many of our team members believe crypto has long-term potential, but the market is largely unregulated and flooded with scams and people/groups with your worst interest in mind. This is not a field we want to get mixed up in at this time.
 
Credit Loans
Large life decisions like taking out loans is not between us and our audience. We are not financial advisors. We have worked with banks in the past who offer these types of services, but we want to avoid promoting them directly at this time.
 
Drop Shipping as a Service
“Drop shipping” simply means listing an item that is available from another source. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a retailer listing a product that’s in stock at their supplier’s warehouse… HOWEVER there is a growing industry that offers to help individuals set up their own drop shipping business with basically no standards for the quality of the service and products. 
After our initial fact-finding, we worked with one of these companies in 2023, but based on community feedback we don’t plan to again.
 
Gaming Chairs that don’t prioritize ergonomics 
The market is oversaturated, and only continues to be flooded with low quality lookalikes. We will continue to use our discretion when entering into partnerships with chair companies and closely monitor our community’s feedback.  
Mental Health/Therapy
We are pro therapy and advise anyone reading this to prioritize their mental health. With that being said, we would hate for someone's mental health to be negatively impacted by a bad experience with a service that we promoted. We do not intend to promote any companies who profit from these services at this time.
 
Online Sport Betting
We do not believe this is responsible for us to promote at this time.
 
Gambling (More Broadly)
We do not believe this is responsible for us to promote at this time.
 
Pay-2-Win Games
Many free to play games can be predatory. We test mobile games to see if that game can be enjoyed without the NEED to sink money into it. We know this is a fine line, but with our community’s feedback we believe we can separate the bad from the ones that are safe for partnership.
Eg. Diablo Immortal (On Launch) = Bad. Genshin Impact = Not Bad
 
Unproven Kickstarters / Indiegogo Campaigns
We’ve simply seen too many issues with false promises and delivery issues from first-time campaigners. We DO, however, understand that for some companies crowd funding is more of a marketing and demand-evaluation exercise, so we have worked with companies who have had successful campaigns or product launches in the past and our intention is to continue doing so.
 

Network Attached Storage and Home Servers
 
If you're reading this, you've seen Linus' videos and might be curious about having a centralized storage location in the form of a NAS or a home server, so let's talk about that.
There are many benefits to having a home server or a NAS, the most prominent of which is a single location to store data and to back up computers to, keeping your data safe. Other aspects might involve additional services that your centralized storage location can provide, including shared printers, media streaming, and e-mail services.
 
There are plenty of existing systems out there, such as those made by Synology, Qnap, and Netgear. There are also small business units available, such as the WD Sentinel. All of these come either pre-filled with drives or empty (in which case you'll need to buy drives). They tend to have a web-based interface as well as a Windows folder interface, which allows you to access your data from both inside and outside your home network.
 
The advantages of pre-built systems are:
Easy to set up (Relatively) inexpensive Come pre-loaded with features Come with warranties Have built-in RAID Can have "special features" like being fireproof/waterproof/shockproof, such as the IOSafe N2 However, they also have their disadvantages:
Performance can be lacking sometimes, especially when running in RAID 5 Unless you buy an expandable unit, you are limited to the number of drives the NAS can hold You also have the option to build your own, which allows you to build any number of configurations from the very simple to a system rivaling those found in the LTT 10TB+ Storage Topic.
 
The advantages of custom-made systems are:
You can reuse existing hardware if it's just lying around. Custom RAID setup (hardware, software, ZFS, etc) Custom networking equipment (4-port gigabit NIC or even a 10G NIC) Custom CPU (or multiple CPUs), RAM, GPU (if you want) Custom software (Windows Server/Home Server, Linux, FreeNAS/ZFS, unRAID, etc) Custom storage configuration (up to 144 TB with a 24-drive rackmount case and 6TB drives) Customize services (Media sharing, e-mail server, CIFS/NFS/AFP shares, VPN server, and tons of others) And the downsides:
You have to build it (although this might be a fun project) You have to maintain it There is a learning curve to software for servers which you will have to climb I personally think building your own is a really cool project, but if maintenance of server hardware doesn't sound like fun then maybe you'll want to go with a regular NAS.

I give this topic looney's schnitzel of approval:

Hardware
 
CASE: 45Drives 
MB: Supermicro X9SCM 
CPU: Intel i3-3240
HS: Standard
RAM: 32GB ECC Memory (4x 8GB PC3-12800)
HBA: HighPoint Rocket 750
SSD: Toshiba 120GB
HDD 1: 27x 8TB WD RED 5400 RPM
NIC: Onboard 2x 1Gigabit
 
Software and Configuration:
Freenas
 
Single zpool 4 vdevs in raidz2 with 9 disks each.
 
Usage:
Storage.
 
Additional info:
This is my primary large NAS.  The next one is under construction. That should contain roughly 100Tb
 
Images:
I have removed serial numbers from

Just in case any of y'all wanted it!
 

 
Uncompressed DL link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16zqexgJ59n8g0yQAgOc_RHFMqGYc484H/view

What do you want to use this for? Switching these WiFis to the same SSID and password would allow seamless switching. No need for mesh, if you already have ethernet at each location.
 
OpenWrt does support 802.11s based mesh, if you can install it on the other routers as well.

This is no issue if you don't care about how readable it is! :P